Ex-defence minister Liam Fox: We must arm the Ukrainians as the credibility of the entire Nato alliance is at stake

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Son_of_Niall said:
Okay then, what sort of weapons would you arm them with? Understanding that arming them is an act of war.
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Understanding that not arming them is taking part in the slaughter of the people as well.

We arm Egypt, Israel, Jordan. Those aren’t acts of war.
 
Path_Finder said:
Understanding that not arming them is taking part in the slaughter of the people as well.

We arm Egypt, Israel, Jordan. Those aren’t acts of war.
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What’s the problem with it being an act of war - it’s a just war.
 
Vouthon said:
Welch argues that propaganda succeeded more effectively in reinforcing already-held attitudes within the Third Reich than in actively conditioning Germans to believe in the Nazi Weltanschauung (worldview), and he furthermore subdivides the effectiveness of propaganda into a number of different strands, for example stressing the void between overall support for the Hitler regime – which was significantly strengthened – and that of specific Nazi policies, which were not always given broader appeal through propaganda. Neil Gregor explained this further when he stated that, “dissent on single issues could exist alongside fundamental support for the regime as a whole”.

If you want my :twocents: this is what has happened in modern Russia vis-a-vis Putinism/Eurasianism.

Eurasianism reinforces many existing prejudices and latent beliefs that the Russian public seems to have concerning America, their declining “great power” status etc. and which state-controlled media continually reinforces. It plays on all the worst elements within traditional Russian nationalism, imperialism and chauvinism, ignoring the more ennobling parts. So while they may not believe all of Dugin’s mystical clap-trap (who could?!), this dissent on “single issues” doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t buy into its basic tenets and support the Putin regime. The central, non-mystical ideas on American unipolarity, Russia’s righteous crusade on behalf of multipolarity, the revival of Russian Orthodoxy and so on, are probably latently held by a good number of people.

All I do know is that, whether we like it or not, the Kremlin’s current ideology in public (and I reiterate “in public”) is essentially the Eurasianism of Dugin.
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Hard to disagree with any of this. Certainly there has been a thread of Slavophilism through Russian history. But it does not admit of the rights of self-determination of any Slavs other than Great Russians. Nor does it admit of such rights on the part of the “little” peoples on the peripheries. Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine were all part of the Russian Empire. They were lost (Ukraine only briefly) after WWI when they became independent states. Stalin put an end to that at the end of WWII, gathering all Slavs (and the “little peoples”) into one empire.

It’s impossible to know for sure just how far Putin feels he can go in re-establishing the “Eurasian Empire”. Likely he’s opportunistic in that regard. Russia today isn’t Russia of the Soviet or even the post-Napoleonic Tsarist Empire in terms of capabilities. But the west is also unprecedentedly weak, and Putin could not help knowing it. The thief is likely to try every door behind which he does not hear the growl of a deep-voiced dog.

When talking about folk myths and how some new enterprise can be built on them, we need to remember that in Germany between the wars, a lot of the national mythologists were nutty, and a lot of Nazi propaganda was nevertheless built on them notwithstanding that many of the upper echelons didn’t really believe in the mythology themselves. Nuremberg had it right in at least one respect; the top Nazis were fundamentally criminals who used a nation that was ripe to be used.

It is not surprising to me that Dugin, and perhaps many Russians, do not feel Ukrainians have any right to be anything other than Russians. There is, of course, the fact that Kiev was the birthplace of Russia. Ukraine was once referred to as “Little Russia”, just as Belarus was known as “White Russia”. The Tsar, of course, was the “Tsar of all the Russias”.

But one thing Chekists avoided was ideology. They were criminals, first and foremost, believing in self-aggrandizement and little else. I do not for a moment believe Putin is actually a “true believer” in Duginism any more than Hitler was a “true believer” in the Aryan myths in which Himmler indulged.
 
Ridgerunner said:
Hard to disagree with any of this. Certainly there has been a thread of Slavophilism through Russian history. But it does not admit of the rights of self-determination of any Slavs other than Great Russians. Nor does it admit of such rights on the part of the “little” peoples on the peripheries.
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The reason Putin and his allies have alighted on “Eurasia” as a geographical and cultural space supposedly distinct from Europe proper - with its “liberalism”, “debauchery” and “Atlanticism” - is because it offers them the opportunity to clothe age-old Russian nationalism and imperialism in a more pluralistic garb. Rather than invading Crimea and annexing it simply for ethnic Russians, which is claimed nevertheless, there is an alleged broader purpose as well: ‘we’re doing it for all Eurasians, not just Russians, for everyone who opposes gay marriage, supports conservative values and hates Western debauchery’. You see what I mean.

In Hungary, the far-right Jobbik Party which is allied to Dugin and has extensive contacts with him explained the logic thus:

newsweek.com/2015/02/27/kremlins-campaign-make-friends-307158.html
Most Kremlin supporters, though, are on the other side ideological spectrum. Gabor Vona, for instance, the head of Hungary’s extreme-right Jobbik party, says his mission is “to liberate Hungary from the Euro-Atlantic slavery…and to expel liberal cultural policy and influence from the state sector.” He has praised Putin for defending and fighting for “traditional family values, Christian morality and our common Eurasian heritage,” and claims that the EU is supporting “ethnic cleansing among the Russian-speaking people in Ukraine.”
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Eurasianism appears to be a more inclusive-sounding excuse for Russian expansionism than say Russian expansionism 😃 In this sense it perpetrates the same lie that lay at the heart of the “Soviet” Union.

I should add that I do ultimately believe, as you noted on another thread, that Dugin is being “used” by the Kremlin. He is pathologically insane. What amazes me is how a person as mad as a hatter has been able to become the holder of two doctorates, the prestigious chair of International Relations at Moscow State University and an “intellectual” respected by numerous political heavyweights in Russia. I have no doubt he will be ‘done away with’ if he becomes a nuisance to the Kremlin’s party line. That’s why despite the fact that he is still being sent on missions abroad to Greece and Hungary delivering pro-Putin, pro-Eurasianist speeches and commands a dizzying presence on state-controlled TV, after his appalling call for a “genocide” of Ukranians in Jung 2014 while giving instructions to Russian separatists in Donetsk, the Kremlin quietly removed him from his position as head of department at Moscow University. Apparently, hundreds of students signed a petition in protest at his words, so the Kremlin was clearly embarrassed by this and so sent him on a mission abroad. It isn’t very useful to have your regime associated with the ideology of a man with fascist leanings calling for a genocide when you are trying to claim that your enemies in Kiev are fascists now is it? :cool:

In this regard read this from the scholar Anton Shekovtsov:

anton-shekhovtsov.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/aleksandr-dugin-and-syriza-connection.html
Dugin hailed the ascent of Vladimir Putin. In its turn, the Kremlin clearly perceives Dugin’s ideas as useful. By being regularly present in the public sphere, Dugin and other Russian right-wing extremists extending the boundaries of a legitimate space for illiberal narratives make Russian society more susceptible to Putin’s authoritarianism…
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1.** Dugin’s organisational and intellectual initiatives are integral elements of Putin’s authoritarian system. In this role, Dugin joins dozens of other agents of right-wing cultural production who, in one manner or another, contribute to the public legitimisation of Putin’s regime**.
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  1. Dugin has worked his way up from the eccentric fringes to the Russian socio-cultural mainstream, but his ideology has not changed since the 1990s. What has radically changed is the Russian mainstream political discourse.
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He is not the only ideologue sanctioned by the Kremlin either (merely the most infamous given his crazy fumigations).

Sergey Karaganov is another:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Karaganov

It was he who came up with the idea of uniting ethnic Russians in other countries with the Motherland:
Sergey Karaganov (Russian: Серге́й Караганов, born 12 September 1952) is a Russian political scientist who heads the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, a security analytical institution founded by Vitaly Shlykov. Karaganov is a close associate of Yevgeny Primakov, and has been Presidential Advisor to both Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. [1]…
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Karaganov is known as the progenitor of the Karaganov Doctrine, which states that Moscow should pose as the defender of human rights of ethnic Russians living in the ‘near abroad’ for the purpose of gaining political influence in these regions. After Karaganov published an article advocating this stance in 1992, Russia’s foreign policy position linked Russian troop withdrawals from the Baltics with the end of ‘systemic discrimination’ against Russians in these countries.
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Unlike Dugin, Karaganov does not appear to suffer from some form of acute mental retardation and does not promote mystical fascism, which potentially makes him even more frightening.

All I can say is, there are some very weird people at the “mainstream” of Russian political discourse nowadays.
 
Ridgerunner said:
It is not surprising to me that Dugin, and perhaps many Russians, do not feel Ukrainians have any right to be anything other than Russians. There is, of course, the fact that Kiev was the birthplace of Russia. Ukraine was once referred to as “Little Russia”, just as Belarus was known as “White Russia”. The Tsar, of course, was the “Tsar of all the Russias”.
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Talking about ordinary Russians, an interesting article published yesterday in the Financial Times:

ft.com/cms/s/0/6b99e242-bc38-11e4-a6d7-00144feab7de.html#axzz3SlDp4vHE

High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. ft.com/cms/s/0/6b99e242-bc38-11e4-a6d7-00144feab7de.html#ixzz3SlELSUTM
**Putin’s propagandists prime Russians for fight
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Kremlin tells people what to think then cites their views to justify acts, writes Andrei Ostalski**
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A young Russian woman living in London recently asked me how she should preserve her relationship with her parents, who live in Moscow. They were, she said, putting intense pressure on her to take sides — to choose between her motherland and its enemies in the west. “War is inevitable,” they told her. “And it’s coming soon, so you have to choose.”
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Her story is typical: Russian social media are filled with disturbing tales of split families, ruined friendships, intimidation, even physical violence.
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The hostility is ostensibly because of events in Ukraine and Russia’s role in them, but it is often presented as a crisis of identity. Where does Russia belong? Where does it stand in relation to the US and the EU? Is it heading for a fatal clash with them?
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Alexei Venediktov, editor of the Ekho Moskvy radio station, remarked recently in his blog: “This is not a war against Ukraine, it is a war for the control of Ukraine . . . but against whom, then, is it being waged?”
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**Most Russians support President Vladimir Putin and his policies in Ukraine. Most share his anti-western views. At home, Mr Putin’s actions have given him an extraordinary propaganda victory. Many younger people are persuaded by television that the west is weak, decadent and more likely to capitulate than risk a direct confrontation. The older generation seems more cautious.
**
But it is a widely sold T-shirt design that best captures the public mood. It is emblazoned with the words: “Don’t make our Iskanders laugh” — and it carries a picture of the strategic nuclear missiles to which the caption refers. This, to many Russians, is the appropriate response to western sanctions: respect us, or we nuke you.
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The courts never question a prosecutor’s account of a defendant’s conduct. At the moment, the sentences are not too harsh — fines and short prison terms are common.
But it is not difficult to imagine this mutating into a nastier form of repression. Indeed, when you listen to the hysterical voices of Mr Putin’s propaganda campaign — with its talk of national traitors and a “fifth column” — it is difficult not to fear it.
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We are heading in the direction of WW3, which could incur the worst devastation this world has ever seen.
 
I’ve never been so ashamed of the leadership of our country that we so often do nothing about these crises. We might as well let ISIS and the Russians take over the world without a whimper.
 
Path_Finder said:
I’ve never been so ashamed of the leadership of our country that we so often do nothing about these crises. We might as well let ISIS and the Russians take over the world without a whimper.
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Isis and Russia (two entirely different entities) are not taking over the world.
 
Son_of_Niall said:
Isis and Russia (two entirely different entities) are not taking over the world.
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Not for lack of wanting it.

But Russia will probably stop at the Polish border; perhaps somewhere in western Ukraine so some foolish thing doesn’t get started with the Poles by accident or miscalculation. The more immediate question will be whether he will take all or part of the Baltic States as well.

ISIS’ ambitions, of course, are worldwide in theory; probably including only the entire Arab Sunni world as a practical matter.

Interesting how the world didn’t expect there to be territorial aggression in Europe again. But here it is. The question is where Russian aggression will stop and who will resist.

Obama will do nothing, of course, in eastern Europe. Western Europeans will probably do nothing, but they might provide some resources to Ukraine. I believe the Poles would fight the Russians with everything in them, which is why I think Putin will stop somewhere before the Polish border. There probably is a point at which Russian deaths on foreign soil will be more than the Russian populace will want to accept.
 
Son_of_Niall said:
Isis and Russia (two entirely different entities) are not taking over the world.
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No, ISIS envisions a world caliphate in its ideology to draw recruits but is incapable of attaining anything even near that whilst Russia does not seek world dominance but a rejuvenated Eurasian Empire in Eastern Europe as a counterbalance to the EU and NATO, which it wishes would make it a “global power” leading a new world order of multipolar “traditional” societies united against “Atlanticism”. So in a sense, even though neither is capable of taking over a continent let alone the world, there is a projected ideology in both cases espousing a new vision of the global order in which the USA is diminished.

Putin said as much himself in his now infamous 2014 “Valdai club speech”:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valdai_speech_of_Vladimir_Putin
Valdai speech of Vladimir Putin is a press-coined name for the speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin given to audience at Valdai International Discussion Club XI session on 24 October 2014 in Sochi city. The overall meeting’s theme was “The World Order: New Rules or a Game without Rules?” [1] The speech focused on modern global politics and caused a major media impact and controversy. Many of the analysts considered it a follow-up to Putin’s 2007 Munich speech where he began to outline his views on world order.
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The Kremlin.ru presidential press service website published the transcript of Putin’s words, and emphasized the following quotations:[3]
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“The world is full of contradictions today. We need to be frank in asking each other if we have a reliable safety net in place. Sadly, there is no guarantee and no certainty that the current system of global and regional security is able to protect us from upheavals. The international and regional political, economic, and cultural cooperation organisations are also going through difficult times.”
“The Cold War ended, but it did not end with the signing of a peace treaty with clear and transparent agreements on respecting existing rules or creating new rules and standards. This created the impression that the so-called ‘victors’ in the Cold War had decided to pressure events and reshape the world to suit their own needs and interests.”
“In a situation where you had domination by one country and its allies, or its satellites rather, the search for global solutions often turned into an attempt to impose their own universal recipes. This group’s ambitions grew so big that they started presenting the policies they put together in their corridors of power as the view of the entire international community. But this is not the case.”
“A unilateral diktat and imposing one’s own models produces the opposite result. Instead of settling conflicts it leads to their escalation, instead of sovereign and stable states we see the growing spread of chaos, and instead of democracy there is support for a very dubious public ranging from open neo-fascists to Islamic radicals.”
“Today, we are seeing new efforts to fragment the world, draw new dividing lines, put together coalitions not built for something but directed against someone, anyone, create the image of an enemy as was the case during the Cold War years, and obtain the right to this leadership, or diktat if you wish.”
“Sanctions are already undermining the foundations of world trade, the WTO rules and the principle of inviolability of private property. They are dealing a blow to liberal model of globalisation based on markets, freedom and competition, which is a model that has primarily benefited precisely the Western countries.”
“You cannot mix politics and the economy, but this is what is happening now. I have always thought and still think today that politically motivated sanctions were a mistake that will harm everyone.”
“Russia is a self-sufficient country. We will work within the foreign economic environment that has taken shape, develop domestic production and technology and act more decisively to carry out transformation. Pressure from outside, as has been the case on past occasions, will only consolidate our society.”
“The work of integrated associations, the cooperation of regional structures, should be built on a transparent, clear basis; the Eurasian Economic Union’s formation process is a good example of such transparency.”
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He clearly has a “global” vision.

The general point that Path_Finder made is thus correct. Both ISIS and the Putin regime are dangerous to international security and our leadership has been slow to wake up to the gravity of the threats on both accounts, as the House of Lords told the British government only recently:

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31545744
Ukraine: UK and EU ‘badly misread’ Russia
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The UK and the EU have been accused of a “catastrophic misreading” of the mood in the Kremlin in the run-up to the crisis in Ukraine.
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The House of Lords EU committee claimed Europe “sleepwalked” into the crisis.
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Vouthon said:
No, ISIS envisions a world caliphate in its ideology to draw recruits but is incapable of attaining anything even near that whilst Russia does not seek world dominance but a rejuvenated Eurasian Empire in Eastern Europe as a counterbalance to the EU and NATO, which it wishes would make it a “global power” leading a new world order of multipolar “traditional” societies united against “Atlanticism”. So in a sense, even though neither is capable of taking over a continent let alone the world, there is a projected ideology in both cases espousing a new vision of the global order in which the USA is diminished.

Putin said as much himself in his now infamous 2014 “Valdai club speech”:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valdai_speech_of_Vladimir_Putin

He clearly has a “global” vision.

The general point that Path_Finder made is thus correct. Both ISIS and the Putin regime are dangerous to international security and our leadership has been slow to wake up to the gravity of the threats on both accounts, as the House of Lords told the British government only recently:

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31545744
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I was amused to see Putin saying how politically motivated sanctions are so bad and shouldn’t happen. I’m sure the U.S. poultry producers, for one group, are agog, since they have been the targets of Putin’s politically motivated sanctions off and on for years.
 
Path_Finder said:
I’ve never been so ashamed of the leadership of our country that we so often do nothing about these crises. We might as well let ISIS and the Russians take over the world without a whimper.
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Yes, I am ashamed too.

I’ve said this before, but Obama makes Carter look like Patton. I am truly shocked at his incapacity to grasp the politics and power plays going on in the world right now and what he needs to do to effectively represent the interests of our country and our allies. Seriously, you would think he was the enemy; I don’t believe that, but his blind, unwavering commitment to domestic sixties leftist ideology makes him a fool.

Completely out of his league on the world stage. And we are not the only ones who plainly see this.
 
FollowChrist34 said:
Yes, I am ashamed too.

I’ve said this before, but Obama makes Carter look like Patton. I am truly shocked at his incapacity to grasp the politics and power plays going on in the world right now and what he needs to do to effectively represent the interests of our country and our allies. Seriously, you would think he was the enemy; I don’t believe that, but his blind, unwavering commitment to domestic sixties leftist ideology makes him a fool.

Completely out of his league on the world stage. And we are not the only ones who plainly see this.
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He is more than within his right to represent the interests of America. What interest it is of his to have his politicians swanning about and making decisions to elect a coup government in a country, over 5000 miles away - is a completely different matter entirely.
 
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